I'll Never Tell
by Carolyn Rose
Summary: Draco Malfoy will go to any lengths to get the information he wants. He does not, however, plan on falling in love for it.
1. Lessons

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter nor any related thematic elements written by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

"Welcome, to all our newcomers. To those returning, welcome back!" Dumbledore's voice rang joyfully throughout the great hall, and everyone sat attentively as the aging Headmaster made his beginning of the year speech. Soon he was finished, and all the students were chatting happily and feasting. Then he stood up again, "Now as our feast comes to a close, I would like to take the time to acknowledge two extraordinary students. Both, through extreme hard work and determination, managed to achieve the highest scores possible, and more, on the Ordinary Wizarding Levels."  
  
"I thought the letter was going to be all..." Hermione said under her breath.  
  
"What?" Ron looked at her wonderingly, although it wasn't really any surprise at all.  
  
"I will now ask that Hermione Granger and-"  
  
"_And_?"  
  
"-Draco Malfoy please stand up!" Dumbledore looked proudly at his students.  
  
"Oh _honestly_. I don't really see the need. Anyone could have done as well if they only _studied_," Hermione started. "But that prat, Malfoy. Who would've thought?" she said as she stood up to a respectable amount of applause.  
  
Malfoy stood at the opposite end of the hall with a ridiculously smug look plastered to his pale face. As his eyes glanced in the direction of Hermione though, his smugness was mixed with a look of disgust. As in, how dare he have to share this award with a mudblood? Oh well, he thought to himself. _As Lucius says, everything comes with a price_. Cue the smug look.  
  
Later on, while the Great Hall was clearing, Dumbledore made his last request. "Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy, please follow me to my office," he said blissfully. Hermione promised to meet Harry and Ron in the Common Room afterward, and rushed off to follow Dumbledore.  
  
"So, how was Granger's summer, I wonder?" Malfoy drawled from somewhere behind her.  
  
"Now why would you even pretend to care?" Hermione snapped. She knew that Malfoys didn't change, and wasn't in the mood to be baited by his malicious comments. '_Why couldn't Ron or Harry have made just a bit more effort to study_?' she wondered to herself silently.  
  
"Funny, seems even an innocent question can trigger a nerve with a mudblood. But you are right there- I don't care." Malfoy brushed his white- blond hair out of his eyes, and walked past Hermione, stepping on to the spiraling staircase leading to Dumbledore's office. Hermione stood there for a second or two, regaining her composure. _It would not be good to hex a classmate into oblivion on your first day back, oh definitely not_, she scolded herself. Once they were both inside, both the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall greeted them.  
  
"I hope you both had a pleasurable summer, it's good to have you back." Professor McGonagall greeted them. Hermione beamed and politely replied, while Draco only scowled and took a seat. "Headmaster Dumbledore and I have been very pleased by your achievements of all "excellents" on your O.W.L.s as well as managing to achieve special recognition from all your practical examiners. Therefore, we are offering you an opportunity to use the skills you have developed so well. Would you be interested in hosting a remedial Defense against the Dark Arts course of your own?"  
  
"Oh, yes! That would be so lovely! Brilliant!" squealed Hermione.  
  
"It will be up to the both of you to decide what specific topics you would like to cover, and it will be first and second years you will be helping. Tuesdays and Thursdays immediately after regular classes. Of course, we will provide you with a classroom and office to share. Any questions?"  
  
"Did you say it was optional?" Draco asked lazily. For somebody apparently so smart, he could seem so indifferent to everything, Hermione thought. Well, it wouldn't be such a horrible tradgedy if he didn't agree to this though, she added to her train of thought.  
  
"Yes I did, Mr. Malfoy," Professor McGonagall said sternly. Her face seemed tighter than ever, her lips pursed into a thin white line. "Are you not going to consider it? This is a very exciting opportunity I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to be a part of."  
  
"_I_ would love to, Professor!" Hermione piped. She looked over- ecstatic.  
  
"I'll do it," Malfoy said shortly. McGonagall looked about to beg his pardon when he stood up swiftly, and said "Excuse me, I have important things to do." He then left through the exquisite wooden doors of the office, as if to show off his blatant disregard for authority. At least, authorities he wasn't particularly fond of.  
  
McGonagall finished explaining the terms of the assignment to an attentive Hermione. "...And would you please inform Mr. Malfoy as soon as possible? You'll of course want to plan to get together and form your first lesson plan soon."  
  
"Well, Professor," Hermione began, "I was wondering if...it would be possible for us to...er...teach separately? One of us could teach Tuesdays, and the other, Thursdays, maybe?"  
  
"Don't be ridiculous. The goals of this assignment are not just to learn teaching skills, but to spark stronger inter-house relationships. As much as we know that sometimes, certain...houses can be a right pain in the...erm...never mind. I'm sure you can stay on top of things, Miss Granger. I have a lot of respect for you," McGonagall said, although it sounded more like she was trying her hardest to restrain herself from saying how sorry she was that Hermione had to work with such an intolerable student as Malfoy.  
  
"I'm just not sure I could work with him..." Hermione chanced. Since McGonagall was head of the Gryffindor house, surely she wouldn't make her top student work with Malfoy, would she?  
  
Apparently she was wrong.  
  
"Nonsense. You'll be just fine," McGonagall said, and stood up to leave.  
  
As the days wore on, Hermione found that it got increasingly harder to pass the information on to Malfoy. Almost as hard as it had been to get Harry and Ron to understand why she would do something _optional _with him.  
  
"You're kidding me, right?" Ron had said at first. His expression was hilarious, in her opinion.  
  
"You've gone daft. Crazy. Absolutely stark-raving mad!" Hermione remembered Ron shouting. "I'm going to KILL him if he even says a word to you. Talk to Dumbledore. Have him...I don't know...just get Malfoy some other bloody project!"  
  
"Ron, calm down. It'll be fine. You don't think I can handle Malfoy? Right. I don't care what he says," she had tried to assure them. She thought to herself, _Oh well. If he doesn't understand, that's fine. He will sooner or later...I hope._ At least Harry seemed okay with it. Well, maybe not okay, but he looked as if he'd be able to process the information calmly later. "It'll be the perfect opportunity to promote S.P.E.W.!" Hermione had assured them happily. She was really ready to do it.  
  
A week later after Potions with the Slytherins in which Snape had assigned, to Gryffindor only, a particularly long essay on the importance of mugwort in the Aging Potion, Hermione had tried to approach Malfoy in the hall. For the fourth time. Every other time she had tried he would either keep walking and sneer or say something along the lines of "Stop chasing me, Mudblood. You'll just have to deal with the fact that I'm completely out of your league." He would then walk away amidst the throng of hollering Slytherins.  
  
"Malfoy! I have to talk to you! Will you just listen to me?!" she half-yelled. If he didn't listen this time she would just have to teach the lessons alone, she promised herself. He kept on walking. Ooh, pity, she thought sarcastically, and walked quickly to her next class.  
  
Later on that day, she was hurrying out of the Arithmancy classroom, which she took with all four houses, as it was a rather un-popular course. She had stayed late to talk with Professor Vector about an extra-credit essay on Neptune, and was just about to turn left to walk downstairs. However, she was suddenly grabbed roughly by the shoulder and jerked haphazardly into an unused corridor. In the process she could feel her left hand hit a sharp piece of cold jagged metal, which sliced through her skin. It all happened so blindingly fast, that she temporarily lost her balance and almost fell against the cold stone wall. Funny, she'd never noticed the corridor before. It was hidden by various coats of Armour, but how her follower had managed to stay hidden this whole time she couldn't figure out. Who would've-?  
  
"Malfoy! How dare you! I could report behavior like this straight to the--"  
  
"Shut up Granger. I can't afford anybody to see me hanging around the likes of you. Why the hell have you been after me constantly?" He was so close to her it was scary, but if he had been any farther away his quiet hiss would have been inaudible. Hermione could feel his breath on her face, and shivered.  
  
"That should be obvious! I've been trying to ask you when you could meet me so that we could go over our lessons! Also, there's more that McGonagall needed to tell you that you would already _know_ if you hadn't just walked out like that!" Hermione began to rant. Just his presence was making her furious, and the fact that he seemed to have complete control over the situation wasn't helping. He just stood there, all serious and collected while she leaned her back against the cold stone wall practically shaking with rage.  
  
"Once again, Granger, I had important things to do," he said. He was too close. Much too close.  
  
"Like WHAT?" Hermione demanded as she pushed him a good three feet away from her. However, physical contact was not the best solution to this type of situation apparently. Damn the ferret for being so...good-looking! _Shut up, Hermione, shut up!_ She repeated to herself.  
  
"You want me to tell you? No. I don't fucking think so. Now you need to tell me what McGonagall said." Shocked by Malfoys tone and language, Hermione faltered for a bit. He talked down to her in a way that made her feel very small and inadequate.  
  
"We...start right away. In fact, our first lesson is...tomorrow", she said, regaining her composure enough for a sweet mock-innocent smile to begin playing at her lips.  
  
"Granger. Did you find it _funny_ not to tell me earlier?" Malfoy demanded.  
  
"Excuse me, but as you may remember, I tried to tell you! Lucky for you, I already have our first lesson planned out. House Elf Rights," Hermione stated matter-of-factly.  
  
"I'm not about to let a mudblood run my project. I'll write, and have it ready--"  
  
WHACK. Hermione had slapped him for the second time now, only this one was considerably harder. She remembered the scrawny thirteen year-old she had been the last time, utterly shocked by what she had done. Oh, how things change. She looked up at Draco, not surprised to see the great red hand print rising on his cheek.  
  
"Damn it, Granger!"  
  
"Don't call me that again! I'm completely sick of it! I'll work with you, if you'll just work with me! I'm trying hard to do this well, please don't make it anymore difficult. Can you do that?" She looked at him pleadingly, but with the smallest bit of hope.  
  
It was more than he deserved, apparently. He made a noise of disgust, and began to walk away, throwing his hands up in the air. He was about to slip through the armory when—  
  
"MALFOY."  
  
"Ok, ok. God, I'll be there. Your lesson," he said coolly, and slipped out silently, Hermione following shortly afterward. She glanced down the direction of the corridor he had turned onto just in time to see him evanescing into the distance.

**.....................................**

A/N: This is the very first fanfiction piece I've written, I hope you enjoy!


	2. The Astronomy Tower

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter, nor any related thematic elements by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

Up in the golden sunlight-bathed common room, Hermione's mood clashed furiously with everything around her.  
  
"Game of chess, Hermione?" Ron had offered, but she turned him down to go to her dormitory and improve every last aspect of her upcoming lesson plan.  
  
"No thanks, I'll just go up to my dormitory to finish this, it's a bit too loud down here," she said. Then she gathered up her books and trudged up the stairs to the door labled "6th Years". But going up for peace and quiet was a mistake. She had only opened the door three inches when-  
  
"HERMIONE!" Lavender Brown yelled. "Perfect! Parvati! We can try it out on Hermione!"  
  
"Try what?" Hermione dared to ask. Some new beautifying spell they had been dying to test, probably.  
  
"We've got this new spell, it's brilliant! Here, read. My grandmother sent it," Parvati explained, emerging from the bathroom in a pink frilly bathrobe, and shoving and equally pink parchment under her nose. It read:  
  
_ The use of this spell ensures, for the next seven days, the most beautiful benefits to the most dry, spell-damaged hair. For sleek, sexy, smooth, straight hair, you can't go wrong with this miracle spell!_  
  
"I'm perfect for that? Are you guys trying to tell me something?" Hermione asked, fingering her curly hair, very unsure about the whole thing.  
  
"Oh, no! Definitely not. Your hair's fine, but this spell just sounds so..._perfect_, that's all," Lavender gushed.  
  
"Well, it does sound great you know, but I really only came up for my...er...potions essay. Right. I remembered something and I want to put it in. I'll just go and...um...get it," she lied.  
  
"But you're always doing work, Hermione. Come on, it'll only take a minute! See?" Lavender pleaded. She shoved the pink paper back under her nose.  
  
_ This amazing new potion only takes a minute! Don't be fooled though, it lasts the entire week!  
_  
"Well...I..."  
  
"BRILLIANT! You'll love it, really!" she squealed with delight. "Just sit down right here," she commanded, and pointed to the edge of the bed. "This will look so gorgeous, Hermione..."  
  
Hermione walked out from the girl's dormitory five minutes later to see Harry and Ron both hunched over Ron's chessboard in deep concentration. "Hey guys, I just forgot my Arithmancy textbook. Well...you know what? Maybe I'll just borrow your cloak, Harry, and go down to the--"  
  
"Hermione! What did you do? Your hair!" Harry and Ron chorused in unison.  
  
"Oh. That. Right. Well," Hermione fingered her silky hair, "Lavender and Parvati found a spell and they asked to try it on me. I couldn't really get out of it, and... is it really that horrible? I know that it's rather drastic, but..." she began to ramble on nervously.  
  
"No, no it's really nice, Herm. Isn't it Ron...Ron?" Harry chuckled at his best friend, who was still staring speechlessly at Hermione.  
  
"It's...you...uh," Ron said, blinking and smiling. Hermione smiled too, her tense shoulders falling with relief.

"Thanks a lot, you guys. I was actually getting sort of worried!" She let out a high-pitched laugh. "Well, I'm going to go down to the...to the kitchens. Do you mind about the cloak though, Harry?" she asked, obviously oblivious to the fact that Ron still couldn't tear his eyes away from her head.  
  
"No, it's fine. See you later," he said.  
  
All Hermione was really planning on doing was taking a walk to get some fresh air. She also wanted to try and get her mind of the lesson the next day, Malfoy, her _hair._  
  
But no such luck. She should have realized that she wasn't the only one who enjoyed wandering around at night. Especially when she was exploring the corridor that Malfoy had pulled her into earlier that day.  
  
Hermione tensed quickly as she heard a quiet voice making its way around the bend in the corridor. "...And she told me that she knew how to get out. Something about animagi, apparently", she heard, coming from an arrogant voice.  
  
"And just how would _she_ know?" said another voice. A loud, obnoxious voice. It belonged to the Slytherin quidditch captain, Montague. She had only barely pulled the cloak over her head when Malfoy and Montague rounded the corner.  
  
"Wouldn't tell me. I think she found out through someone else in the family, but I'm not really sure. Asked me if I would be up to something. If I wouldn't mind 'going out on a limb' to help him. I will, but she'd better just hurry up and tell me already what she wants me to find out, because so far, all I can figure out is that that Potter knows..." the sinister voice of Draco Malfoy was now out of earshot, no matter how much Hermione strained to hear.  
  
Potter. Harry? What was Malfoy going to do that involved him? "Out on a limb," too. What's with him? She wondered. Adrenaline rushing and heart beating quickly, Hermione then set off on her way back to the common room to tell Harry and Ron what she had just heard.  
  
CRASH. In her hurry, she'd knocked into a coat of armor, causing it to hit the one beside it, which both wobbled for a minute. She stood, frozen with a mixture of shock and the fear that it would either fall over completely or that somebody might have heard. And somebody did. Somebody they called Filch.  
  
"What's that, my sweet? Ah! The student! Out of bed. At this hour, the shame. My, my, my, look who we have here. Miss Granger! Do follow me to my office", the care-taker wheezed while his voice shook with excitement. The day just did not end.  
  
Hermione followed the care-taker reluctantly, and resisted her initial instincts to just throw the cloak over herself and escape, but that would have been much too risky. It was also difficult not to pull the cloak over herself merely to fend off the increasing cold as Filch led her farther into the dungeons, towards his office. She had never been in it before, as it had always been Ron and Harry that got in trouble with Filch.  
  
"Here we are..." he said mostly to himself, while he inserted one of hundreds of keys into the lock. He did not bother to light the fire.  
  
"Sit down", he said gruffly. Hermione had not entered more than three paces, because it was so dark and cold...  
  
But Filch finally lit a single lamp, which was enough to illuminate his desk and throw random jets of muted light on him, making him look eerily like a ghost made corporeal. Hermione turned to find a seat with the pathetic aid of the solitary lamp, but even with the poor lighting she could make out the unmistakable outline of another student seated in front of the desk. She began to hesitate...  
  
"Sit. Down!" Filch barked as a muscle in his neck twitched.  
  
"Why hello Granger", the other body voiced as it turned to face her. She watched as the flickering light began to reveal slowly more and more of the other student. A boy. He had sharp features, his cheekbones flushed, his lips a pale pink, his white-blond hair catching the candlelight.   
  
"Malfoy..." Hermione began.  
  
"SILENCE!" Filch shrieked, and bent over to continue methodically sifting through a massive pile of student records, in order to find each of theirs. Hermione timidly sat down as far away towards the end of the bench opposite Malfoy as humanly possible.  
  
"Here. Now Miss Granger, what were you doing out of bed after hours, hmm?" Filch asked, leaning over his desk.  
  
"Well, I...er...was looking for the...er..."  
  
"Astronomy tower, Mr. Filch", Malfoy interrupted. "She told me to meet her there at one o'clock. Of course, I was only out to tell her that it was a bad idea..."  
  
"I did NOT! I was--" Hermione protested.  
  
"Lost, then? Because that note clearly stated that you wanted to meet me in the Astronomy Tower", Draco said. His voice was playfully spiteful.  
  
"Malfoy!! What the hell are you trying to--" For the third time, she was interrupted, but this time it was by Filch.  
  
"I've heard enough. Detention, both of you. Every night this week. Trophy room. And NO magic", Filch declared. "To your respective dormitories, now. Mrs. Norris, care to make sure they resist any temptations to wander?"  
  
"Prrrup", she replied, and followed the two out.  
  
"Granger, you are much too funny under pressure. I wonder, how _does_ Potter stay alive? I had thought that he always had you to run to for some quick answers to everything. But apparently 'quick' wasn't the word I should've used", Malfoy said maliciously, and glanced at her.  
  
Hermione, however, was not in the mood to talk calmly. She had detention. Bloody _detention_. Therefore, she opted for yelling and shouting.  
  
"Why did you have to go and get us detention? I could have easily gotten out of it! And the Astronomy Tower? Malfoy, that's just disgusting!" she seethed.  
  
"I needed an excuse to talk to you", Draco said, as if it were obvious.  
  
"You got us detention together so you wouldn't have to risk your stupid reputation by talking to me?! That's rich, Malfoy, you git."

Draco grinned evilly in her direction before parting ways with her and Mrs. Norris for the Slytherin dormitories.  
  
"Oh, and Granger?" he said, spinning around raising his eyebrows. "If you think that trying to tame that bush you call hair is a way to impress me...you're wrong."  
  
Hermione let out a shrill scream of frustration.  
  
"Don't flatter yourself, it is NOT for you!" she yelled, and stomped off towards her dormitory. If Draco had been any less generous, he would have said that she was flouncing.  
  
That night, Hermione found it very difficult to fall asleep.

**..........................................**

**A/N**: WOW, I actually got reviews! Thank you! StandardxLines- yeah...every time I go back and read my story I find all sorts of errors and wierd things, so there are probably tons still there. If you find something out of character I wouldn't mind at ALL if you pointed them out...I like criticism.


	3. Detentions and Nightmares

**Disclaimer:**I do not own Harry Potter, nor any other related thematic elements by JK Rowling.

**A/N:** READ THIS BEFORE YOU READ THE CHAPTER! (If you don't you probably won't make it much farther in this story.) Draco will seem **extremely** OOC here, but before you think "ok there goes _another_ story down the drain, this author is completely insane," remember that **there is a reason for it**. Really..._I'm_ not crazy. He is. Points finger

**I'll Never Tell**

The next day, Hermione became increasingly more nervous about the lesson that night. She had it all planned out, but how was she supposed to split the lesson with Malfoy? The idea of staying calm around him simply stumped her. What would her students think if she hexed Malfoy to a puddle on their first lesson? With all this weighing so heavily on her mind, Hermione found that her last period class ended much quicker than she would have liked it to.  
  
"Good luck with your lesson, Hermione," Ron told her, as she set off towards her new classroom.  
  
There were more first years than she had expected, and a few of them she recognized as Gryffindors. It was 3 o'clock. Why was Malfoy so late? He definitely wasn't one to be late. 3:05. Oh dear—she would have to start alone.

"Hello," she began, "I'm Hermione Granger. I, along with Draco Malfoy, am going to be teaching this class, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. The lessons we have ready for you aren't going to be boring...believe me! Um...today, I planned for us to teach you about House Elves..." Hermione began a little shakily. _Where was Malfoy_? She wondered, glancing towards the empty door.

She took out a box of S.P.E.W. pins. "First of all, who has a House Elf?" she asked. A few students raised their hands.  
  
Then, "Er..."  
  
Draco Malfoy burst through the door.  
  
"Oh my God," Hermione gasped, and dropped the box to the floor.  
  
Draco was wearing all black and probably ridiculously expensive billowing robes which flew out and trailed behind him as he walked quickly to the front of the room. The robes had a rather Snape-resembling collar, and were lined with a thin silver embroidery of intertwining letter 'M's.  
  
Apparently he was in to making big first impressions. Hermione dropped to the floor and hastily gathered the pins back into the box, and then found that when she wanted to introduce Malfoy, she couldn't speak properly.  
  
"This is...erm..."  
  
"Draco Malfoy," he said shortly, joining Hermione behind the desk and pulling out the lesson outline she had owled him earlier. A few students snickered at the name, but were immediately silenced when he glared at them and said "_Excuse me_?" He leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, "I'm never letting you write the lessons again, Granger. This is appalling. I say, we start the lesson with a few quick facts everybody should know. Where the Astronomy tower is, how to break into the girls dormitories, the basic point values for Moaning Myrtle's different body parts--"  
  
"Shut up! That's ridiculous," Hermione turned back to the class. "Why don't you tell me about your house elves while Draco hands out these pins...?"

**.....**  
That night Hermione, Harry, and Ron were all sitting in the common room that night dinner discussing how the lesson had gone. "It went...alright, I guess," Hermione explained. "They didn't seem to like Malfoy very much...like it's much of a surprise. But you guys should have seen what he wore! Ha! It was ridiculous."  
  
"Yeah, I can imagine," said Ron. "Well, I'll see you guys later—I've got quidditch practice." As Ron said this, Harry looked at the fire with an expression desire. The ministry was still in the process of lifting the lifetime ban he had been given by the relentless Professor Umbridge, and so he couldn't play for the season.  
  
"Quidditch practice already? Damn, what time is it?" Hermione asked, unconsciously racking a hand through her hair.  
  
"Quarter of seven...why?"  
  
"I forgot, I have detention with Malfoy tonight!" Harry and Ron exchanged quizzical looks.  
  
"Filch caught me and Malfoy the other night after hours and he made up some awful story. Oh God...that sounds bad. I'll explain everything later, I promise! I've got to go though, see you later, hopefully!" She dashed out of the common room.  
  
When she got there, Malfoy was already waiting for her, leaning up against the trophy cabinet, casually twirling the key around his finger. Hermione noticed that he had changed his clothes.  
  
"Sorry, Malfoy, I almost forgot..." Hermione said breathlessly.  
  
"That's ok, Hermione," he said simply. _Wait a second_.  
  
"Excuse me? What did you just call me?" she asked. Draco held out a rag for Hermione to take.  
  
"Hermione. I called you Hermione. I figured that we should stop fighting with each other, and be civil. I mean, we've never even had a proper introduction," he said, now holding out his hand. "Draco Malfoy," he introduced himself.  
  
Hermione hesitated. She was about to ask him what he was playing at, because she doubted very much that he was being the least bit sincere. Although, she figured that she was more likely to get a better answer once she took his hand...so she took it. The feeling of her tiny hand inside his long thin one sent shivers down her spine that felt like an electrical shock, making her nerves seem extra tuned in to the tiniest touches. She was nervous.  
  
"Hermione Granger," she said, nodding. "Are you alright though, Malfoy—I mean—Draco? Why are you acting like this...all of a sudden?" She just couldn't resist asking him. It was obvious that he was being untruthful, because he talked like a door-to-door salesman on his 100th house of the day, dying to race through the words and get away as fast as he possibly could.  
  
"I'm fine, and I told you. If we're going to work together, we can't be fighting all the time. You were right the first time you said that, and I should have listened," he said in a dismissive tone, but looking at her directly with piercing grey eyes.  
  
_How strange_, Hermione thought. It was like he completely changed his personality in three hours.  
  
"Well, Draco, I suppose that now you could tell me why you had to leave Professor McGonagall's office so early other day?" she asked, just testing how "civil" he would be with her by asking a question she knew he would never answer.  
  
"I said I was going to be civil with you, not your best friend," he said, laughing in a forced manner as if trying to lighten up the situation a bit.  
  
"Fair enough," she admitted. "But just one more question."  
  
He raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Can you really get into the girls dormitories?"  
  
Draco laughed. "That, Hermione, is the kind of question you'll only find the answer to in time." _What was that supposed to mean?  
_  
"Whatever. Common, we need to hurry up and finish in here. I have so much homework to do when I get back. But about next Tuesday's lesson, I was thinking we could..."  
  
They finished talking nearly an hour after they stopped cleaning.

**.......**  
  
Just as they said they would be, Harry and Ron were waiting for Hermione in the Common Room when she got back, eagerly awaiting her account of the awkward night. She pulled her favorite chair towards the fire, and began to tell them.  
  
"It was creepy. He was acting like a different person, almost! Like I was a pureblood, or a Slytherin. I mean, he went through this whole 'introduction' thing and asked me to call him 'Draco'! Then, later, he actually told me that he respected me, and that I was one of the smartest witches he'd ever met! And at the end of the night, he even told me that I was...er...never mind. Obviously, he's trying to get something from us", she stated.  
  
"Us?" Harry asked.  
  
"I mean...me."  
  
"Exactly, 'Mione. Don't forget that. Just ask him what he wants, and feel _free_ not to give it to him!" Ron said, looking genuinely struck by the way Hermione had been talking about Draco. He had kept wringing his hands, and shuffling his feet. _But the way I'm talking about Malfoy IS absurd_, she reminded herself.  
  
Also, Harry and Ron were her _friends_. They knew only what was best for her, and she for them. That was also why she chose not to tell them about what she had heard the other night—about what Draco had told Montague. Feigning a headache, Hermione said she needed sleep, and headed up to her dormitory. She fell asleep with a knot of guilt writhing in her stomach.  
  
The next day drew to a quick close, and even though Hermione was utterly exhausted, she managed to extract herself from her advanced potions textbook to go down to her detention. With Malfoy. Malfoy, she repeated to herself. The castle was very drafty, she noticed suddenly, crossing her arms over her chest and stifling a yawn. A lump rose in her throat as she thought of Malfoy some more, and her stomach fluttered uncomfortably with anxiety. It was so confusing, the way he was trying to charm her into this doomed friendship, and she couldn't figure out why.  
  
She reached the Trophy Room at quarter past seven.  
  
"Hi, Draco. Sorry I'm late, I'm just so tired that I completely lost track of time," she told him, walking closer.  
  
"It's alright. How about I do the detention tonight and you just go rest over in that chair," he offered kindly. It felt so strange to see the face she associated all the time with hatred actually being used kindly.  
  
"Ok, but I have to ask you something really important. And you have to promise that you won't lie, even if we aren't exactly...friends. Alright?" she said.  
  
He only looked at her, eyebrows raised, waiting for the question.  
  
"Are you a Death Eater?" she asked quickly.  
  
Draco hesitated, and then answered, "No."  
  
"Oh, good. And...um...Draco?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
Hermione dropped her eyes down to where his hand had begun to slowly intertwine itself with hers. "You can l-let go of me now." She smiled. He dropped her hand, and gave a feeble half-smile in return. _He would make a brilliant actor_, Hermione thought to herself. She imagined what his reaction to a muggle movie would be, and chuckled. She walked over to the chair and sat down and began watching him clean. What petrified her, though, was the new knowledge that he wasn't trying to trick her into just a friendship anymore...

**.....**  
  
The week of detention was over in the blink of an eye. Every night was generally the same—Draco would continue his ridiculous 'I want to be your friend' act, and Hermione would spend nearly the entire time plotting clever ways to make him confess what he was up to, but he never did.  
  
Once, she had gotten extremely close by telling him that she was secretly getting a bit sick of Harry and Ron, and asking what he was planning to do to them next. He looked like he was about to tell her, and then...just laughed.  
  
"You're too much of a Gryffindor to ever be tired of Weasley and the Boy Who Lived to Make Me Sick," he said. "Nice try, though."  
  
"Oh come on! I honestly don't understand why you have such a problem with them. You don't seem to mind being nice to ME. I mean, would it _really_ hurt to be civil with them?"  
  
"That depends on your threshold of pain", he had answered gravely.

**.....**  
  
That night, the night Hermione crept up to her dormitory utterly exhausted from her last detention, she had a nightmare.

_ She was being carried by a terrifyingly long green serpent down  
a dank, musty corridor. Lining the walls were what looked like  
vertical rusting metal bars, or at least that was what she could make  
out at the breakneck speed she was traveling. Too stiff from fear and  
cold to jump, she clung tightly to the reptile. She closed her eyes  
tightly for a second or two, but the minute they were open the head of  
the serpent had changed into the head of none other than Harry Potter.  
She screamed, and fell off, watching as Harry took off running and  
left her there. The walls with their rusty bars and molding crevices  
began closing in, a claustrophobic feeling surrounding her shaking  
body. A voice drifted her way and a sinister voice danced in her ears,  
chanting "I'll never tell...I'll never tell...I'll never tell..." The voice  
became louder and louder, until the point where she thought she could  
stand it no longer, and she stood up in an attempt to run in the  
direction Harry had, when suddenly—  
_  
CRASH! She had fallen out of bed, her white bed sheets twisted tightly around her thin figure, damp with sweat.  
  
"Hermione! Are you okay? How did all this happen...?" Lavender asked, scrambling out of her bed to help her untangle herself from all the sheets, a worried look on her face.  
  
"I...I don't really know. I had a bad dream, that's all...I guess it just got to me a bit too much...but I'm fine, really," she said, steadying herself on her bedside table. "Go back to sleep."

**.........................................**

A/N: _Draco is wierd! Draco is wierd! Draco is wierd!_ Hmm...well...no, actually...he's up to something. He has not lost it, he is merely...uh...keep reading and you'll find out.


	4. Consequences

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter nor any other related thematic elements by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

"Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy. Would you care to explain to me why you have come so far behind in your lesson planning?" Professor McGonagall peered over her tiny new golden rimmed spectacles from behind her desk after Advanced Transfiguration. "Your students have been complaining that lately your lessons have seemed relatively boring and unplanned." Hermione and Draco were sitting in the two desks closest to the front and center, looking rather guilty. It was Hermione that spoke first.  
  
"We've both been really busy, with the detention and all, and Malfoy is finding to be very...difficult...to get together with," she explained about the fact that even though Malfoy was being nice to her in private, he was still completely indifferent towards her in the halls.  
  
"Listen," she said, sighing. "I feel that I have no other choice now but to schedule a mandatory lesson-planning session for you two. I didn't think it would be so hard for you to get along, but now that I know it is, I'm just going to have to interfere." She was clearly disappointed, and directed her speech mainly towards Hermione.  
  
"No!" she said breathily. "Professor...Malfoy and I just...can't find a good time. It's not like we're fighting, we're actually getting along fine," she defended, looking at him sternly and willing him to look compliant. _Why did I say that_? She asked herself.  
  
"Will wonders never cease!" she said in a lofty tone. "I'm still going to schedule this for you. I will inform you of the time after class tomorrow, I'll have to think about it. Good day." Draco and Hermione nodded resolutely, and left together until the fork in the corridor in which Draco turned to go to his dormitory, and Hermione left towards the Great Hall for a quick lunch with her friends. It was only after a few minutes after she sat down when she received a letter.  
  
The letter was sealed with a green wax seal of the Malfoy crest, just like every letter Draco had ever sent her. This one asked her to meet him in the disused storage closet on the third floor that night at 9 o'clock. Sighing, she wrote a quick reply back, concealing it from her fellow Gryffindors, wondering what on earth he wanted to meet her for. In truth, she really didn't want to go. She had loads of homework she needed to get started on, and felt that the dark circles that had begun to form under her eyes needed ridding of. However, it seemed that she was not going to get the sleep she longed for tonight. She got up and headed towards the owlery.

** .....**  
  
Laying in bed and staring blankly off into space, Hermione felt completely exhausted. It took all her energy not to fall asleep then and there, and it became ironic how lying down and doing nothing could have such a draining effect. Nine o'clock slowly neared, and she grudgingly pulled on her winter cloak and crept downstairs. She didn't have Harry's invisibility cloak, and therefore needed to be extra careful. After re- reading the note, she began to make her way towards the third floor. Despite the fact that she was exhausted, sneaking around after hours gave her a rebellious, adrenaline rushed feeling that she was actually beginning to become fond of.  
  
Soon, the storage room door was directly in front of her, and she was gripping the knob, twisting it slowly.  
  
Draco was already in the room, sitting on a wooden chair so dusty that it looked like it would be soft as worn leather. He was wearing just a plain black outfit and, surprisingly, he looked wide awake.  
  
"You're actually on time, I noticed," he said with a smirk creeping across his face.  
  
Laughing a little, Hermione sat down on a stool in the corner and removed her cloak. "Yes, so did I. What's this all about anyway?" she asked, because it was a question that had been nagging at her all evening. She stared at him, waiting, noticing how long it was taking him to form his answer.  
  
"Well," he began slowly, "I thought we should get together to sort of...help each other out. You know, with us not being able to plan our lessons, or get our own work done for that matter," he said. "And I know that McGonagall started that whole bloody planning session, but I was thinking that we could get our own homework done together. I mean, we're at the top of almost all the same classes, so..."  
  
"I get what you're saying, but why do you want to meet after hours and...in _here_? It's a bit er...cramped."  
  
"Do you really want to be seen with me during hours? Just imagine what Potter and Weasley would say," he told her. A shadow of his old nature was kicking in, like the way he used Harry and Ron's surnames with a distinct accent on the two words, almost spitting them out like they were painful to speak.  
  
Hermione nodded acceptingly. "Er...no. I see your point. So... where do you want to start? I'm exhausted, so I'll only work for a while," she said.  
  
"How about Ancient Runes, then, that essay is killing me," Draco said. "Oh and...here, I brought us something to drink," He handed her a dark glass bottle. "It's from the manor."  
  
"Thanks," Hermione said, accepting the drink, and noticing that the bottle was unmarked except for a flowing script running around the bottom, in a Slavic language she did not recognize. It tasted very good, all the same, tingly like mint at first, but honey-sweet in the aftertaste. "Ancient Runes, it is."  
  
_Hours later..._  
  
"Draco! Hey! That's not fair!" Hermione giggled. He had playfully stolen her bag and begun to copy her potions notes. "Give me yours, then!" She had been joking around with him nearly the whole evening, as if they were old friends, but the whole time she knew in the back of her mind that for him it was simply an act, and nothing more. It had just felt so easy to talk to him, and she was sure that the influence of sleep-deprivation and whatever was in that drink were also causing her to act so differently. She wasn't stupid.  
  
"You? Cheat? _Never_," he mocked, continuing to copy. "Gryffindors don't do that, remember? You are moral and law-abiding citizens who enjoy sucking all the fun out of life, which is why at this particular moment you are absolutely _stunning_ me."  
  
"Excuse me, but we aren't exactly saints, if that's what you're implying. Gryffindors are action while Slytherins are all talk," she said, standing up to go reclaim her bag, but not breaking eye-contact with Draco. Suddenly she let out a shriek, and tripped on a pen lying on the floor.  
  
Before she had time to react, she was falling over towards Draco who, thankfully, reached out to stop her from landing straight onto an old supply rack.  
  
"Hey, you could have ruined my homework!" he said, holding her arms while she steadily regained her balance.  
  
"Ruined your _homework_? You're homework. And you call me obsessed. Ha! I bet that the Slytherins are probably just like the Gryffindors, when there's nobody around to try to impress," she said huffily.  
  
"Calm down, I was only joking, Hermione. Technically, it's _your_ homework, anyway. But why does everybody seem to feel like they have to be just like the Gryffindors and not the Slytherins? Not that everybody is good enough to be like a Slytherin, I mean. Take Potter for instance, he is doomed to be pathetically faultless for the rest of his life," Draco declared. "And you too. You're way too—hey! What're you doing?" he asked. Hermione had been leaning over him to grab another drink.  
  
"You don't mind, do you? These are really good..." she asked, her words beginning to slur together.  
  
"Well, actually, you might not want to...er..."  
  
"And what do you mean I'm not good enough to be in Slytherin?" she said, ignoring him and giggling even harder. She sunk onto his lap with an "_Oof_". Their homework fell on the floor crumpled, and she grabbed his shoulder to steady herself. Her eyes were fogged with exhaustion and her mind was spinning. She wasn't thinking clearly. "Not that I would ever try to—want to...er...be. No offense, I mean...but I could..." she trailed off, and before Draco had time to collect himself, she had kissed him. _Ok, never mind_. She wasn't just not thinking _clearly_, she wasn't thinking at _all._  
  
It was completely over in a matter of seconds, but Hermione had actually done it. Completely in shock, Draco had just sat there, his lips completely un-responsive. Hermione, who had acted solely impulse in what was merely an attempt to show Draco down, immediately knew she had gone too far.  
  
"Oh my God. Draco. Malfoy. Tell me RIGHT NOW what was in those drinks..."she demanded, before everything went black.

**.....**

Hermione woke up the next morning to the sound of metal clanging against glass. As she opened her eyes and squinted to see what was going on, the light flooding in through the windows pierced her eyes and set off fireworks of pain inside her head. She was in the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey was standing by her, mixing a yellow smoking elixir. It was late morning.  
  
"Sit up, now," she said. "Careful...not too fast, not too fast! Drink this," she said as she handed Hermione the warm glass. She gulped it down quickly and immediately felt relief to her throbbing head. "Now what's this all about, Miss Granger?" she asked. "Draco Malfoy carried you down here at quarter of six this morning looking half-dead! He told me that you must had have drunken some bad juice, because apparently you passed right out!" Madam Pomfrey gazed fixedly at her, hands on her hips, looking very stern.  
  
_ Oh God. Draco Malfoy. The storage closet. The homework. The jokes...the flirting. The kiss._ Oh God, Hermione thought. She began to panic as all the memories of the previous night flooded back and hit her.  
  
Madame Pomfrey spoke again, more sternly this time. She must have noticed the fear on Hermione's face. "But...that story doesn't fit your symptoms. There is no poison! So how could this be? I don't mean to suspect the worst of you, but is there anything that Mr. Malfoy may have..._left out_ of his story? Something you might know?" This was strange of Madame Pomfrey, she was usually one to not ask questions.  
  
"No! No, that's really all. I mean, don't know what was IN the juice though," she lied. "So that must be the reason. 'Bad juice' doesn't necessarily mean 'poisoned' juice, does it?" Hermione prayed that the pathetic story was believable.  
  
"This is all very curious, Miss Granger. Very curious indeed..." Pomfrey said, but Hermione barely heard her, because she was drifting off into a dreamless sleep.  
  
That evening, Hermione had been resting, drifting in and out of light sleep, when somebody walked in. She could tell by the shock of black hair in dire need of a trim that it was Harry. She had always loved Harry's hair, so black that it looked like every individual strand had been dipped in ink, and if you touched it, the color would rub off on your fingers and never come off.  
  
"Hey 'Mione," he said. "I brought you your potions homework."  
  
"Oh, thanks. Where's Ron?" she asked. They always visited her together whenever she wound up in the hospital wing.  
  
"He hasn't told you?"  
  
"Told me what?" she asked, confused.  
  
"He went to ask Casey Brisette out. She's from Ravenclaw," he said. He almost looked like he was bracing himself for an outburst from Hermione, as if she would disapprove.  
  
"Oh..." she said, blinking, and taking a minute to think. "I didn't even know that he liked her. Had he told you?"  
  
"No, just this morning. Now that you mention it though, that is a little weird, isn't it?" he said, and reached up and brushed his hair out of his eyes. They both sat in silence for a few minutes. Around her friends, silence seemed comforting, but around Draco it was the most perfect expression of scorn, Hermione thought. She asked Harry to describe the girl to her.  
  
"She hasn't been in any of my classes, but I think she's a fifth year. Er...she's got brown hair, and she's pretty thin, and..."  
  
"You've just described about 100 girls so far, Harry."  
  
"Well Ron told me that she's really funny, too."  
  
"50 girls..."  
  
"You know what? I'll just point her out to you instead. How about that?"  
  
"I think that would be a much better idea," Hermione said, and smiled.  
  
"You'll be back tonight, right?" Harry asked.  
  
"Probably, I feel fine. But don't you have quidditch practice today? It's seven o'clock," Hermione said. She was always on top of things. Only, she couldn't say that about the previous night.  
  
"Oh, Angelina is going to _kill _me, now. Gotta go!" he said quickly, and ran out.  
  
"Bye, Harry." 

**.....  
**  
Somebody was poking her arm. Hermione was reluctant to open her eyes, and tried to ignore it. She hoped that whoever it was would go away. But they didn't, and the poking only got harder and more insistent.  
  
"Ouch! _What_?" Hermione finally snapped irritably. She was taken aback by who was standing in front of her. She had expected it to be Ron, or Lavender and Parvati, or even Madame Pomfrey. She definitely wasn't ready to see...Malfoy. He raised his eyebrows at her. "What?" she said again. She was in a very bad mood, but couldn't put her finger on the reason.  
  
Draco tilted his head to the side in an observing manner. "You're cute when you sleep," he said. _Wait a second, there_. He had already played his joke—he poisoned her. Shouldn't he have been acting like his old self again?  
  
"What?" Hermione asked for the third time, feeling stupid now.  
  
"Although...that looks like it might hurt," he said, and pointed to her right hand which was completely bent flat against her forearm and lying at her head. But she always slept like that.  
  
"And your point is...?" she said. _'Why am I being so mean?_' she asked herself. Hermione noticed that she didn't _want _to be friendly with him. It was like she needed to compensate for the way she acted the night before by being hostile and indifferent. He didn't seem to notice, and it felt unfair.  
  
"I just wanted to see how you were. You were in a state last night," he said.  
  
"Yeah, a state of _unconsciousness_," Hermione answered sarcastically, eyes blazing. "And yet, you didn't bring me to the hospital wing until quarter of six in the morning! Then, you decide to make up some ridiculous story for Madame Pomfrey instead of telling her the truth, which is that you gave me a poisoned drink! If you expect me to forget about it and act like your friend or something, you are so very wrong," she said. It felt good to get all her emotion out.  
  
"You didn't seem to mind the drinks last night," he said, clearly talking about when she had kissed him. "And they weren't _poisoned_, they were alcoholic. I thought you had known that."  
  
"I DIDN'T! All I know, is that—"she stopped talking for a second, and tried to calm herself down. She counted to ten. "No...you know what? I am really tired. I am also not in the mood to talk to you, or even look at you for that matter. So if it's not too much of a problem for you, leave, shut the door on your way out."  
  
Draco was taken aback. Maybe it was some weird side-effect of the medicine that was putting her in such a foul mood, but that was unlikely. It was just that Draco was so positively infuriating that she just could not stand to be near him. The mixture of annoyance, rage, and embarrassment was making her want to simply crawl under the covers and block the world out. So she did.  
  
Before Draco left, he stood and hovered by her bed for a few seconds. Then, she heard the door shut, and was immersed once again in dreamless sleep.

**.........................................**

**A/N:** Thank you so much for reviewing so far! And _please, _if there's anything grammatically incorrect or something doesn't seem to fit or work in with the story, or if a character seems off, anything like that, tell me! I'm in to constructive critcism...anything to make the story better. Also...is there any way to edit a chapter once it's been uploaded?


	5. Annoyances

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter nor any other related thematic elements by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

**.....**

Only once Madame Pomfrey was completely sure that Hermione was fully rested and well did she let her leave. She felt refreshed, like when you finally jump into cool water on a scorching summer day. Maybe it was the sleep, or maybe it was the feeling that she had finally given up on Draco, and was back to her usual Slytherin-despising self. It was probably the combination of the two.  
  
Another thing that kept her alert was the curiosity about Ron and this girl Casey that he apparently liked so much. She felt like she had missed out on so much in one day that she wanted very badly to run the whole way to the Gryffindor common room. Instead, she smiled brightly as she walked very briskly, her bag over her shoulder, and up to the tower. She passed by Ron's younger sister Ginny, who called to her to come and talk for a minute.  
  
"Hermione! _Guess what_," she said. Her freckly face was absolutely dripping with sarcasm, a signature trademark of the infamous Weasley temper.  
  
"What?" Hermione asked, hoping that maybe Ginny would be able to fill her in on the Ron situation.  
  
"Did my brother tell you that Ronald decided to ask _my_ friend out?" she asked, almost accusingly. It was a rare occasion that she called him 'Ronald'.  
  
"No, Harry told me about it this morning, and I had no idea about it until then...why?"  
  
"Well, it's not like I can do anything about it, but I just can't believe that he'd do that to me! He nearly rips the heads off any boy I ever try to date, and now there he goes, asking one of my friends out! It's even worse!" she said. It sounded a lot like she just needed somebody let her anger out at.  
  
"I take it she said yes," Hermione inferred.  
  
"Yeah, she did. And now I can't even talk to her about it, because she'll probably get all defensive of him instead of me, you know?"  
  
"Mmhm," said Hermione, thinking very quickly. "How are you guys friends, anyway?"  
  
"She's in all of my classes with Ravenclaw, and I'd been her partner a few times, so..."  
  
"So she's a fifth year," Hermione inferred again. For some reason she had never imagined Ron dating a fifth year, maybe because of Harry's thing with Cho Chang, who had been in the year above him.  
  
"Uh...yeah?" Ginny said, shaking her head as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She laughed for a split second, then just as quickly, she ran off, pointing at her watch and cursing at herself for losing track of time again. "Got to go, bye!" she shouted over her shoulder.  
  
Despite the fact that she felt rather sympathetic towards Ginny, Hermione was glad that she now had a better grasp of what had been going on.  
  
"Ron!" she shouted, when she finally made it to the common room and spotted familiar vibrant red hair. "What's all this about?" She made a wide gesture with both hands that didn't really indicate anything. Ron looked confused.  
  
"What's _what _about?" he asked, squinting.  
  
"Don't be daft, Ron. I'm talking about this girl! This girl that you never even told me about, this girl whom I never even knew _existed_ until Harry told me about her earlier today," she said. It frustrated Hermione that she could tell that Ron had known what she was talking about. He just didn't want to be the first one to directly address the topic.  
  
"Casey," he said slowly, supressing a grin. "Well I've liked her for a while, and this afternoon I asked her out to Hogsmeade next weekend. It was easier than I'd thought it would be, I mean, she's been Ginny's friend for ages, so I already kind of knew her. Chocolate frog?" he offered, and handed her one of the last ones in the pile of sweets he always had with him.  
  
"Thanks," she said, taking the candy and beginning to unwrap it. "Are you sure you know her? I don't even recall seeing her in school, let alone at your house over the summer or anything."  
  
"That's because her parents are muggles. Anxious warts, really, but don't tell her I said that. They think she'll come home in pieces, or something. And yet they send her to Hogwarts!" Ron said, laughing nervously. "So...yeah. I would've told you about her, really, but I just never got the chance. You already told me that you and Harry were sick of hearing me go on about girls, so this time I didn't say anything, I just asked her out. You should be proud of me," he joked, and grinned. He looked pleased with himself.  
  
_Whatever floats his boat_, Hermione thought. Did he just ask her out to prove that he would quit being all talk, and really do it? Or was it something else? He didn't seem entirely convincing, but Ron was always too much of a nice person to do something like that to prove a point to his friends...  
  
Hermione sighed. He was actually quite lucky to be able to have such a straight-forward romantic relationship with someone. She had never had a real boyfriend, unless you counted the time during the summer before her fifth year when her old primary-school friend Andrew visited her for a weekend. He asked her out a couple times after that, but she was never really interested in him. It was the same story with Viktor. It seemed to her that if she were to ever actually have a relationship, it would be so much more complicated and dramatic, because things like this just didn't seem to come simply to her. Either that or she would always remain alone.  
  
Sure, spells and papers and potions all came easily enough to her. She could sit down and write a paper at the best of her ability for four or five hours straight. She could just never find the motivation or courage to go out and meet new people. Some days she would tell herself firmly that she was okay with that. She told herself that she had plenty of friends who would always be there for her, which was true. But every once in a while, it seemed that her life needed something more--an escape from the constant routine of endless work that was starting to wear away at her. It started as a tiny, barely noticeable feeling that got stronger every single day. It was the realization that being a teenager wasn't just learning—it was growing up. And she couldn't shake the feeling that part of this growing up was missing...

**.....**  
  
Three days later it was snowing outside, for the first time all year. Most students had jumped the opportunity to host the first snowball fight of the season, and that included nearly all of Hermione's friends. She, however, had too much work to do, and therefore decided to spend her time in the library.  
  
There was a reason that she had let her work build up so much. But she would not admit it, because to her, it was not a worthy reason. Instead, she blamed it on being too caught up with planning her lessons. That was true, but in reality, the underlying reason was locked up inside her. She did not want to admit to anybody, not even Harry or Ron, that the reason was that she was spending all of her spare time trying to avoid Malfoy.  
  
After he had left her in the hospital wing the few days before, she had tried as hard as she could to put the most negative image of him in her head, and then block out everything she had felt about him during the week he had been acting so differently. When that didn't work, she decided to forget he even existed.  
  
But try as she might, she spent so much time concentrating on not thinking about him, that he turned out to be the only person she _wanted_ to think about. It really was true that the things you deny yourself of end up being the things you desire most. Her avoidance had actually almost had the opposite effect of what she had hoped for.  
  
She was constantly on the lookout for him, walking away as fast as she could whenever he approached. When she would pass him in the corridors she would stare straight ahead, determined to look like she didn't notice him, not really seeing anything. But in those few seconds when their shoulders were aligned all that she could think about was him. One day, she was bound to walk into something if she kept it up.  
  
It was not long before Hermione had made her way to the library and was sitting down at her usual table surrounded by books, parchment, paper, and quills. She was really quite enjoying the sense of peacefulness that came with the view of the dazzling snow that was falling just outside the tall window. It was what she had imagined a princess to feel like on a day like this.  
  
But there was also work to be done, and the opportunity to get it all completed was too much to pass up. Hermione tackled Arithmancy first, enjoying the constant structures and algorithms of the numbers. After that, she wrote her extra credit History of Magic essay on the early advances of medical wizardry. Soon, Hermione could see the outdoor snowball fight progressing towards the south side of the school, just below her window. Much of her time was spent just watching her friends play, not really wishing she were out there too, just feeling a bit removed. This did not bother her, however, because it was also relaxing, and relaxation was what she needed most desperately at the time.  
  
_ I need to stop worrying so much about little things_, she told herself. It was true that she often got carried away when she thought about trivial problems such as Ron's girlfriend, or Malfoy, or her class, or even homework.  
  
_I let too many things bother me_, she thought. After about five minutes spent just contemplating how she could simplify her hectic life, her thoughts started to blur. The air seemed to be getting heavy, and soon her eyelids seemed even heavier, and then she had fallen asleep.  
  
The brief sleep that Hermione managed to get did not last very long, however. For soon there was a voice somewhere over her shoulder, and it was one that she could not easily dismiss. It was Malfoy.  
  
"Pleasure, it's Granger. Been feeling rather _distant_ lately?" he asked her mockingly, ignoring the fact that she was waking her from a blessed sleep. Obviously, he was acknowledging the way she had been avoiding him. "I've been trying to talk to you, but it's suddenly like I'm the plague, and you need to run away whenever you see me." When he spoke he twisted the words so that it sounded like she was to blame. This woke her up fast enough.  
  
"I do not," she said huffily, absently drumming her quill quickly on the table and not looking him in the eye. "It's not my fault if you happen to show up whenever I need to be somewhere else. And what, do you need to talk to me or something? Because if you do, you can say whatever it is that you need to during our lesson-planning session. Ok? I need to go."  
  
"Where?" he demanded.  
  
"To the..." she stumbled for words, and began to get nervous.  
  
"You don't have to go anywhere, I'm not a bloody idiot," he said.  
  
"I..." she began to say something, but realized she didn't know what. Then she came up with something. "You know what? There is something I wanted to ask you, actually."  
  
"You think I came here to answer your _questions_?" he said instantly angrily. "If you want to ask questions, come find me on your own. I didn't spend an entire fucking hour running around the school to find you so you could ask me a _question_. No, I..." he stopped mid-sentence and took a breath and ran his hand through his hair quickly, obviously trying to keep his temper down. He looked like he wished he could have taken what he had just said back. "Er...Sorry," he said quickly and quietly as if he were nine and saying a swear word for the first time.  
  
"_What_? You must be the most confusing person I've ever met," Hermione said. "What's going on?"  
  
Draco pulled out a chair and sat down next to Hermione. She was thankful to have him at eyelevel, so she didn't have to crane her neck to look at him, making him seem much more intimidating.  
  
"I didn't mean to get angry," he said, head bowed. "Actually, I came here to apologize." Slowly he raised his head, and met her eyes, amber locking on grey.  
  
Hermione hesitated, carefully forming her answer so that it didn't come out to harshly. "I can definitely admit that I've been avoiding you. But...how can you not see _why_? Don't jump to conclusions and think that I'm scared of you or anything, because I'm not. And don't assume that I don't like you either, because..." she took in a deep and shaky breath. "I've really enjoyed working on this assignment with you."  
  
"Then what are you getting at?" he said, raising his eyebrows uncomfortably in an effort to shake the vulnerable-ness of his expression.  
  
"Look," she said. "You just said that you weren't an idiot. But neither am I. I'm not blind. The past few weeks you've just showed me how bloody _naive_ I can be, to believe for so long that maybe, just maybe, you had actually changed. And now, I know better." She paused, letting the information sink in slowly. "Draco, the reason that I've been avoiding you is that I know I can't trust you. Simple as that."  
  
"What the hell do you mean you can't trust me?" Draco demanded, completely taken aback. He attempted a comeback. "How cliché is _that_?"  
  
"I'm not trying to be cliché, Malfoy. There's no other way I could say it," Hermione said, angry that his pride was making him act like such a jerk. "Just Listen to yourself! One minute you're so nice, but then the next you're back to your old self, rude, and arrogant, and cold, and--"  
  
"Alright, alright! I get it! Just let me talk, I didn't come here to get degraded by you either," he said, as if everything Hermione had just said had bounced off him like rubber. "If you're just going to talk to me like that, I'll talk to you like that too."  
  
"Ok, fine," she said in surrender, placing the palm of her hand on her forehead and leaning on it. She wanted desperately to get out of the library as fast as she could, but for the life of her could not come up with a reason.  
  
Draco quickly turned around to check if anyone had been watching them, and then turned around again to face her. "I came here to apologize for not bringing you to the hospital wing straight away the other night. It's just that they would obviously think that I had done something to you, and I would also have to explain why I'd been out after hours."  
  
"You _did_ do something to me, idiot."  
  
"Yes, but I thought you had known. I should have told you that it was alcoholic, so I could say that I apologize about that too," he said seriously. All this teetering between 'new' and 'old' Draco had begun to give Hermione a headache, trying to decipher which was which. "And I also assumed that you knew why I don't acknowledge you in the halls. The Gryffindors would probably rip both of us to shreds for it, Hermione. I didn't want them to stop us from doing this project together. I like working with you too."  
  
"Oh my _God_, Malfoy! Just stop it, okay? You're making a fool of yourself, trying to act all apologetic for me! Why can't you just act normally? It'll be so much less confusing," she yelled, as she shoved all her books into her bag, trying to pick up all her papers as fast as she could with her shaking hands. Madame Pince gave her a reprimanding look, and she began to run.

**.....**  
Hermione kept running for what seemed like ages. She was dangerously close to tears, and was having trouble seeing where she was going. She didn't know what to think of her current situation. All she knew was that Draco Malfoy was the most inconsiderate and confusing moron on the earth. How could he do this to somebody, and then flat-out deny it?  
  
There had definitely been times before when she knew she should have just asked what the hell he was up to. She never did, though, because part of her didn't want to know what was going on. She had liked the way he acted around her. He would listen to her talk, and he was funny, and witty, and charming. But then, unexpectedly, he would snap like he couldn't take it anymore. He was like a violin, so tightly wound and delicate that even the smallest bit of pressure in the wrong spot could cause him to crack.  
  
Furious with herself, Hermione refused to let herself cry. She felt that it was her fault for being so unaware of all the warning signs. She was smart...it was just that this one time she had taken a chance. And the thing is that with chances there are always two possible outcomes of the situation. Malfoy could have been getting to like her, or...it could have been just an act. _And it was an act. I need to leave it at that,_ Hermione thought. _There's no use dwelling on it, Malfoy is just an arrogant bastard and I only had the misfortune to believe otherwise. End of story.  
_  
She was now standing at the entrance to the Gryffindor Common room. Absently rubbing her palms down against her skirt to smooth it, she said the password, _Scherzo_. There was still hardly anybody inside as she made her way to her dormitory to finish her work in silence. When she was there, closing the door shut and locking it, she decided to take a long shower instead, hoping to clear her whirling thoughts.

**......................**

**A/N:** YAY for really sucky pointless chapters! And in any case, thank you for reviewing!


	6. Ron

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter nor any related thematic elements written by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

The week following was one of the most stressful that Hermione ever remembered, unless you counted exam weeks. This was surprising, too, because it was also one of the most uneventful. The only reason that it was so emotionally draining was because she had constantly been uptight and uncomfortable. The reason? Almost every single one of her classes was with Malfoy.

Hermione felt exceptionally relieved when she found Casey, Ron's girlfriend, to be not the least bit unfriendly or annoying, as many other fifth year girls were. In fact, they had practically become friends due to the fact that she had joined Ron at the Gryffindor dining table for lunch each day. The two of them came across as extremely pleased with one another, and to nobody's knowledge had they had a fight yet. Hermione wondered, cynically of course, how long that would last. Many of her thoughts were negative and pessimistic that week. Perhaps it had been the gloomy weather or...something else.

The two lessons that she had taught had been especially nerve-wracking. Draco had been painfully indifferent towards her, and it was a miracle that the lesson-plans had been pulled off so cleanly. During Thursday's lesson, McGonagall had come and pulled them into the corridor for a minute to tell them of the date, time, and place they could have their planning session. Every Thursday night, immediately after their class, in the fourth library study chamber. Hermione absolutely dreaded it. A sickening knot of anticipation writhed in her stomach every time she thought of spending an hour alone with Malfoy. She couldn't even talk to him during their classes without feeling like her throat was immediately drying up.

On Friday, a second year student of hers came up to her in the hallway and actually asked when the lessons were going to start getting interesting. It made her feel absolutely terrible, having to lie about not even properly planning any future lessons so far. She had promised him that they would get immensely better, but the most difficult part was convincing herself of that...

"Hermione!" a bright and faintly urgent voice called. Hermione spun around, recognizing the voice. A grin grew her face, because it belonged to her friend, Casey.

"Hey! What's up?" Hermione asked, as Casey walked quickly to catch up to her. They both walked in the direction of the Great Hall, and because it was around six thirty, dinner was nearly over. Hermione noticed a slightly distraught look on Casey's face immediately, because it made a stark contrast with the perpetually bubbly look she usually wore. Their walking pace considerably slowed as she finally joined the other girl.

"Hey, actually, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute. Do you mind?" she asked, arching one eyebrow uncertainly.

"No, no. Not at all," Hermione said. She was about to suggest she wait to talk to her until they were at dinner, but she sensed that Casey was more in the mood to speak privately. "Why don't we go down there," she suggested, jerking her chin in the direction of a staircase leading to a dead-end hallway that was seldom used. Casey nodded, and they wandered over to it, and slowly descended the stairs. Hermione felt the atmosphere begin to grow tense, like she had many other times the previous week. Casey and she were friends, but she didn't think that they knew each other well enough or felt comfortable enough with one another yet to speak this seriously. "So...what about?" Hermione asked.

Casey leaned up against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest, making herself look uncomfortable. She looked as if she had been debating whether or not to talk to her all day, and was still unsure of the decision she had made. "It's about Ron," she said, and paused. "Is there something going on between you two?"

Silence pounded in her ears, and Hermione gasped shortly, taken aback. She had no idea what to say, and stared off to the side, mouth dry and partly open, trying to find something to say. She muttered a pathetic "no," in order to buy herself more time to think. _What is going on?_ She wondered. _Have I done something to make her think that Ron and I are or were together? Does that mean that the whole school knows?_

"What's that?"

"No! What are you _talking_ about? I think I'm more surprised by this than you are," Hermione said. She interlocked her fingers and rested them on her head for a moment, terrified at what Casey might say next. But she only sighed, and looked relieved.

"Oh, thank Merlin," she said. "I'm really sorry Hermione, I didn't mean to be rude or jump to any conclusion, but I just couldn't hold it in any more. It was really silly of me, really. I'm so sorry." She apologized emphatically, and then turned away quickly; shoulders visibly stiff, to go off to the feast.

"Wait!" Hermione called. She was disappointed that Casey failed to even offer an explanation as to why she had come to think such a thing. "No! Don't be sorry, Casey, tell me what's going on! What did I _do_?" she pleaded, exasperated.

Casey sighed again, deeper this time. "It's not you, it's Ron. Have you seen it?" she asked.

She was baffled. "Seen what?"

To Hermione's complete surprise, Casey's eyes started to well with tears. "Oh, _Hermione_," she said. "Have you seen the way he _looks_ at you?"

Silence.

Casey went on. "Have you ever noticed the way he talks to you when he doesn't know I'm around?" A single tear slid down her cheek as she bent over slightly, her hands in her long brown hair which was falling over her thin shoulders. "Have you heard what he says about you?" The corridor seemed to get immediately hotter, as Casey choked out words she sounded like she despised. "Haven't you _noticed_?"

Everything seemed to disappear in that moment and all Hermione could see was this girl in front of her, helplessly torn between friendship and love. "I've liked him for years, Hermione," she said softly. "I could barely believe it when he asked me out, that he actually liked me too. But maybe, that's not true. Maybe I just imagined it." Casey slowly started to walk backwards, her palm against the cold stone wall to guide her.

"I..." Hermione began, but then realized that she did not know what to say.

"I don't mean to say that you're—"

"Casey!" A new voice shouted from the top of the stairs. Hermione jumped, slightly startled. She looked up to see who was calling, and then gasped loudly. The voice had belonged to Ron Weasley, who was grinning. He began to walk down the stairs, surveying the situation. "Casey, I've been looking all over for you," he said, walking over to her, his hands out. But his gaze was not on Casey, it was on Hermione. She suddenly felt as if she were betraying Casey, and the warm copper eyes lingered on her farther than she would have liked. Torn between rage and sympathy that one of her best friends had created a heartbreaking situation like this, Hermione wanted desperately to run away.

Hermione looked over at Casey to see that she had turned herself away from Ron, trying to hide her face. It was obvious that she did not want him to see that she had been crying, and she was frantically rubbing all the water off her eyes. They no doubt were going to become irritated.

"Casey...what's going on?" Ron asked uncertainly, breaking the deadly silence. He was looking at her for the first time, absent-mindedly rocking, with a worried expression on his paling face.

Hermione watched as Casey straightened up, and they locked sparkling eyes for a moment. She felt out of place, unable to help her, and looked away, eyes darting to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Casey take her bag, swing it over her shoulder, and turn around to face Ron, glaring. Silence rung softly as she walked out, looking as dignified as she could with her hair waving about and her cheeks bright. Hermione tried not to smile because inside, she was cheering.

Ron stood in place, but his head turned and followed her up the stairs, around the corner, and out of sight. He turned back to face Hermione with a shocked look on his face, but she had begun to leave too, not wanting to face him. Before she left though, she stopped directly in front of him, and stared directly into his eyes. He began to smile...

And then she slapped him. His shocked look was priceless, but Hermione wasted no time in walking as far away from him as she could.

_I'm on a roll_, she thought as she walked. _A roll of ruining other peoples lives, in addition to my own. _

Hermione found herself in the library, because her feet seemed to know the path there the best. Somehow, she managed not to look too distraught or, God forbid, cry. She wouldn't have been able to bare the humiliation, anyway. People would have thought, _What the hell is up with HER_? And they would have stared at her without even bothering to be subtle about it. This was one thing that Hermione absolutely couldn't stand about Hogwarts—everybody thinking that everyone else's business was their own.

She walked over to her usual spot, and laid her books down on the antique desk that was almost completely hidden from view behind various shelves. A loud growl from below her reminded her suddenly of her hunger, and she cursed the bad timing of everything. Then there was a second sound.

It was the sound of rubber hitting metal, dull but just audible enough to be noticed. She whipped her head around, but saw nothing. A third sound. This was the unmistakable sound of a book being closed too quickly. Hermione stood up, and slowly approached the bookcase behind which the noises were coming from.

She leaned over towards the shelf, her nose tickled by all the dust. Finding a small hole in between wood and paper, she squinted and looked through the books. Expecting to see another person, or a house elf or something, she was confused when all she saw was...yellow? She sighed, and put her hands on her hips, walking around to the other side of the bookshelf. There he was, leaning over, scanning book titles. "Malfoy, what are you doing?"

"Oh, I didn't see you," he said looking startled and standing up straight again. "I'm looking for a book on the Loss of Substance Potion." His tone was very polite.

"I'm sure," Hermione answered sarcastically. They both stared at each other uncertainly for a while, not knowing what to say.

"Well I found it," he said, smiling the "I really don't want to talk to you right now" smile. He grasped a tall book with long fingers and yanked it out of the shelf. "See you tomorrow, Hermione," he said, and walked away.

Frustrated, Hermione let out an exasperated yell. "Why won't he leave me _alone_?" she said to herself, automatically assuming that he had only been there to watch her and not really to find some old book.

Madame Pince shot her a reprimanding look. "Miss Granger," she said, "I'm afraid that's not a very appropriate volume for a library."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "But I—"

"Sorry Miss Granger, but I need to ask you to leave," she interrupted. In response to the horrified look on Hermione's face she said, "I'm sorry, but rules are rules," and tapped her finger on the Library Guidelines sheet. She shook her head and watched Hermione (who happened to be her favorite student) pick up her bag, and walk out through the doors, her shoulders tense and hitched up towards her neck nervously.

Hermione Granger...kicked out of the library. It was a sentence that had never even been imagined by any of the Hogwarts population, and now it was a reality.

_It's all Malfoy's fault. If he hadn't have been spying on me, the foul lying bastard, I wouldn't have gotten so mad_, she thought angrily. In part, this was true. Hermione, under any other circumstances, would have never raised her voice in the library. Only...it was very strange that all it had taken this time was a small encounter with an enemy to get her so worked up.

She had walked out of the library in a daze, not exactly sure where to go. Dinner had still been in session, and Hermione had absolutely no desire to face Casey or Ron at the moment. Ironically, she no longer felt hungry. Most of her homework was finished, and there were nothing else she could think of to do. What was there? After mentally sifting through possibilities, Hermione settled on sending an owl to her parents, who were probably eagerly waiting for a letter by now, for she had not sent one in two weeks.

Hermione began the lonely trek up to the owlery, all the way down the history wing, up three flights of thin stair cases, and through a hall that led to a fourth. Aside from the sound of light rain and the annoying sticky feeling of humidity, the only things keeping her company were her thoughts.

**.................................................  
A/N: **Sorry I haven't updated in a while! More chapters will be coming soon... And seriously people, remember... I LIKE CRITICISM. wink


	7. Blurry

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter nor any related thematic elements written by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

Before the owlery finally came into view, Hermione could smell the stench of hay, feathers, and droppings hanging thickly in the damp air. Casually holding her hand over her face, she walked past a few final doors, and stopped at the largest one labeled "Owlery." Very creative.

She opened the door and, upon walking in, stifled the "uurgh," that rose to her mouth. Not all the owls had woken up yet, and she didn't want to disturb them. Walking over to an open window, Hermione fished around her bag for parchment, ink, and a quill, listening to the soft "hoo's" coming from the magnificent birds. When goose bumps began to rise on her arms however, she decided against sitting next to the window, and voted for fighting the odor in order to keep warm. So she walked over to a desk in the corner of the room.

As soon as Hermione sat down, she felt the dirt and grime of the furniture rubbing against her bare legs, and shuddered with disgust.

Maybe writing letters in the owlery wasn't a very good idea.

_Oh, this is wonderful_, she thought grumpily, and wiped the back of her pleated skirt with her hands. _Where will I write my letter now_?

The thought of the warm and cozy Common Room became much more enticing at that moment, and she stuffed her writing utensils back in her bag, preparing to write her letter in the comfort of a nice fire instead. Yes, that was a much better idea. She could just send the letter the next morning.

Hermione was smiling at the prospect of fresher air as she walked over to the door on her way out. She wondered what she had been thinking when she decided to actually compose the letter itself in the owlery. Oh wait a minute there...she _hadn't_ been thinking.

She put her hand on the brass doorknob and turned it, imagining all the disgusting germs that were probably living on it, and making a mental note to prepare a sanitation spell for the next day. Her head was not watching the door, but rather following the chocolate birds that were beginning to stir. Closing the door slowly, she let go of the knob, and turned around.

Then she almost died of shock.

Draco Malfoy had apparently come to the owlery, and was standing just inches behind her. When she turned around, she instantly jumped. This was strange, because instead of jumping backwards, her body jerked _forwards_, arms jetting out in front of her.

"Argh!" Hermione shrieked, as she lost her balance in all the commotion. She began to fall forward, and as she did so everything began to happen very quickly. Before she knew it, the ground was right in front of her face, and she closed her eyes, surely about to hit the floor.

Only she didn't. And the reason why was that she hadn't been the only one to have fallen—she had taken Malfoy down with her. _Damn it, damn it, damn it!_ She cursed silently at the realization. Her legs had flung up behind her, and she was supported crookedly on top of Malfoy's stomach, bag fallen to the side.

Hermione's eyes flew down to Draco's, and they locked on each other in absolute shock, as they both tried to get up at the same time, stumbling and falling back down again. Hermione was muttering rapid apologies, while Draco was scowling. He did not like to be surprised and now...his hair was probably brilliantly messed up.

"Nice job, Granger," he jeered.

Hermione flushed vividly, not knowing how to react. She wanted to apologize more but didn't for fear of sounding like an idiot. She also wanted to whack him for coming that close to her after she had clearly told him just minutes ago to stay away. As a result of all her jumbled thoughts, only a sketchy "arphm" came out of her mouth. _What an idiot_, she thought. This was so embarrassing.

Hermione used her palms on the ground to prop her top half up over him, and looked down. His hair wasn't messed up, although his shirt was, and he was _smiling._

"What," she said, arching her eyebrows. His expression was humorous, but not in a good way. It was a smile that reminded her of his old icy sarcasm, and she wanted very badly to know what had prompted him. Being so close to his face, Hermione could also make out a small white scar right at the top of his forehead, and wondered where he had gotten it.

"What?" she asked again.

"Your ink," Malfoy said disdainfully, "is all over my shirt."

"Oh!" Hermione said, quickly rolling off of him. She looked at his simple gray shirt, and saw the evidence of a broken ink bottle that had fallen from her bag. Maybe it wouldn't have scared her so much if the ink had fallen on somebody else, but this was Malfoy, and his shirt, plain as it was, was most likely to have cost a fortune.

"What's _wrong _with you?" he said as he sat up, staring at her all the while. Hermione froze up.

"I'm so sorry," she said hastily, "I didn't mean for that to happen, but you were right behind me and--"

"This ink is _green_," he interrupted her. "Since when do you steal my ink?"

"What...?" she said, not really understanding his gist.

"Granger," he said, and Hermione felt like she could have slapped him. "I have about ten of these shirts back at home."

Hermione ran her hands through her hair, and mumbled "Oh," trying to smile a little. "Well then why do you care so much about this one?" she asked.

"I _don't_," he said annoyingly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Maybe you've never heard of this little thing we humans like to do called _joking_." Hermione rolled her eyes at her own foolishness. Then, she watched as he began to unbutton his shirt, top to bottom.

Malfoy did not waste any time as he quickly pulled all the buttons through the loops with his agile fingers and drew the shirt off. Feeling suddenly uncomfortable and trying very hard not to stare at his chest, she began to pick up the broken pieces of her ink well. Then, she did a quick mopping spell to scrub the ink out of the tiles as best she could. Malfoy also took out his wand and was attempting to clean off his shirt.

"_Apisborium_," he muttered, holding the clothing out in front of him. The spell removed most of the ink, but left a faint jade-colored stain and a pensive look on Draco's face. He was sifting through his knowledge of spells trying to find another one that would save his shirt.

"Here," said Hermione, ever cleverly, "I know what'll get that out." She brandished her wand, and cast a gentler version of the spell she had used to clean the floor, but the stain stayed.

"Ahh, never mind," Malfoy said, crumpling up the shirt and stuffing it in his bag. "I'll send mother for another one tomorrow." Hermione wondered why he hadn't bothered to put it back on. After all, the stain was barely visible and now he was stuck shirtless. She looked around—down the hallway, out the window, on the floor, everywhere—just so that she would keep herself from staring.

Out of nowhere, there was something noticeable on her head, a soft light touch. Hermione looked up and saw that Draco had leaned over towards her, very close, and reached his hand up. Her eyes followed his hand as it slowly came down away from her silky hair and to the front of her face, and was clutching a small light gray owl feather. Their eyes locked for a moment and they smiled, but Draco did not remove his hand from her face, he only dropped the feather and they both sat there on the ground, watching it slowly drift down to rest on the pleats of her skirt.

"Er...Thanks," she said, and then lifted her hand and placed it on Draco's, pulling his down. "But you have to remember, I'm not going to fall for these little—" Hermione's head jerked to the side. "What's that?"

There was a faint clicking noise coming from a distance, down the corridor it seemed. All of a sudden, there was the booming sound of someone running down the passage way to the owlery—the one just next to the corridor Hermione and Draco were sitting in. She could tell that whoever they were were getting closer, just about to turn the corner--

"Hermione, what the bloody hell are you _doing_?" a stunned voice gasped.

It was Lavender Brown, probably the one and only girl out of all the 6th year Gryffindors that Hermione would venture to call a 'friend.'

"Hermione!" she shouted again, taking a few steps back, shaking her head in disbelief at the scene she thought she had walked in on. "What in Merlin's name...?"

Draco immediately pulled his hand away from Hermione's, looking away and scrambling to his feet just like Hermione did only one second later. His expression, somewhat humorous, was being taken over by his signature smirk as he gained his tall posture and picked up a book he had been carrying. He sauntered over to Lavender, not casting any glance back at Hermione, and leaned over, and whispered something in her ear.

"You..." she said hotly, and jumped away from him and strode quickly over to Hermione looking enraged. Her eyebrows were furrowed angrily meaning that whatever Malfoy had told her had not pleased her in the least.

Hermione stood speechlessly and watched Malfoy walk away down the corridor as Lavender put her books on the floor and placed her hands on her hips. She raised her hand and held a pointed finger at Hermione just below her chin, her other fingers curled as if to imitate a pistol.

"He's not worth it," she said fiercely, without any sort of introduction. "I don't know what this (she gestured at the ground where they had been sitting seconds before) is supposed to mean, Hermione, but I'll tell you one thing, and that...is to stay away from him."

"No, Lavender," Hermione said, nearly laughing, "You _don't _know. That didn't...mean anything, I swear to God...it didn't."

Lavender shook her head, laughing with a cynical smile, and raising her eyebrows slightly. This gave her the look of an elder that knew something that Hermione didn't.

"What did he say to you?" Hermione asked urgently.

Lavender only shook her head once more in disapproval, and walked away, slender heels clicking softer and softer until they were gone.

As she watched her leave, Hermione let her shoulders sag, and looked down to the floor, sighing deeply. _What does she think of me, now?_ She wondered despairingly. She looked at the tiles that were stained green still, and blinked slowly. A small piece of parchment caught her eyes, and when she observed it more closely, she remembered that it had slipped out of the book that Draco had picked up. She had meant to hand it to him, but never got the chance.

Curiosity got the better of her, and she picked it up silently, turning it over to read the words that were written on it in dark jade colored ink.

_Narcissa_, it read.

_Not yet._

**A/N: **Hmm...stupid pointless chapter (except for the end!)... but thank you SO much, cold-eyes-for-you, for the awesome review of the previous chapter. Since I was away all summer (not writing), it's probably safe to assume that updates will be a bit less frequent than they used to be until I can catch up with the story.


	8. Spreading Lies

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter nor any related thematic elements written by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

_Don't be daft, just sleep on it. It means nothing_. Hermione was walking back to the Gryffindor common room, clutching a bag in one hand and the note in the other. She desperately wanted to chase after Malfoy and ask what the words were about, but thought better of it. There had been, however, something about the words that sent icy cold shivers down her spine, and there was nothing she could do but assume that he was up to no good. _Not yet_, it had said. What was not yet? The possibilities were endless.

On the other hand, if there was one thing that Hermione had learned over the past year, it was to not act on impulse. It was her weak-spot, to absentmindedly become obsessed with something trivial and to pursue it like mad. Or sometimes, she would simply act foolishly. This was one of those instances in which she could have easily made an idiot out of herself, chasing down the halls past dinner looking for a Slytherin.

Thus, Hermione decided to do nothing.

As she entered the common room, she spotted Lavender sitting by the fire in silence, a small book on her lap that was assumedly some sort of trashy romance novel. Ron was not in sight, and neither was Harry.

"Lavender," she called, walking across the room to go sit in an adjacent armchair next to the petite girl. She looked up, and smiled slightly.

"Hi," she said simply.

"Look. About that, just now. Forget about it. I could explain to you what was going on, but you'd call me crazy, and...it's sort of a long story. But..."

"Hermione, I heard you the first time," Lavender said, but she wasn't being sarcastic, her tone was gentle and upbeat. The other girl stayed silent. "But the way you were looking at each other, I...don't understand what it meant. You weren't enemies, you didn't hate each other, you...you looked like..." she sighed. "I don't know. I'm being silly. Just..._tell _me, okay? Tell me if there is something, you know, _going on_. I mean, we're friends, right?"

"Yeah," Hermione said. "We are."

"So," Lavender said, "What _is _going on? I'm up for any story, Hermione."

Hermione smiled and thought for a minute. She considered what she should tell her. Was it safe to talk about the trials and tribulations she was having with her disastrous so-called relationship with Draco? Lavender Brown, gossip queen, would probably have a ball with the news. But on the other hand, something about her at that moment seemed so absolutely sincere and welcoming that Hermione found it hard to keep her mouth shut. "Draco Malfoy, that's what's going on," she said.

Lavender summoned a blue bookmark with her wand and slipped it into her book, setting it aside. "You have that class to teach with him, right?" she asked.

"Yes, but...it started before that. I had detention with him during the first week of the class, and...he is the most confusing person I've ever met."

"How so?"

"You know Draco Malfoy, right? Arrogant...annoying...he's always bothering us," Hermione stated, and Lavender nodded, grinning slightly. "Well...one night during detention he started calling me 'Hermione' and acted totally nice to out of the blue. There was no reason for it, and, to tell the truth, I thought it was a joke. But he didn't stop. He would talk to me. I mean...I told him things, like...oh, God. Lavender, I _told_ him things about...about...a friend, and how he escaped from somewhere very terrible, and how he had to become an animagus to do it, and..."

"_Who?!"_ Lavender interrupted her, and probably for good reason.

"No one, it doesn't matter. But...he would tell me things too, and help me with my school work and...and eventually I began to..."

"Notice his _fabulous_ abs? Seriously, have you seen them? I still remember the day in my fourth year when I caught him changing before a Quidditch match—"

"Parvati," Lavender interrupted, "Where the hell did you come from?"

Parvati Patil, a tiny Indian-looking girl was standing behind the two other girls, listening to their conversation. She was wearing the standard school uniform, although it was hard to see under all the jewelry, accessories, and makeup she had piled on top of it. "I just got back from my date with Seamus! Oh, he's so lovely," she chirped. "But _this_, Hermione, seems much more interesting, eh?"

Lavender, her best friend, laughed at her in a jokingly manner. "It's none of your business," she jested.

"Honey," Parvati said, "Everything is my business."

"How much have you heard?" Hermione asked.

"Enough...you are so lucky, you know. It's only a pity that he's such a bastard. If only he wasn't allowed to open his mouth!" Parvati said. Lavender giggled girlishly, her personality doing a complete back flip in just under thirty seconds. "Tell us more!"

Hermione was reluctant now. Talking to Lavender had been okay, but she knew that Parvati would never be able to keep a secret. It was a disaster enough that she had heard what she did, and saying more would only fuel the rumors that she dreaded were going to start spreading like wildfire the next morning.

"Well, actually," Hermione said nervously, "I was really planning on going to bed. It's past midnight." She yawned and stood up. "I'm beat."

Parvati looked disappointed. "Oh," she said exaggeratedly. Then Lavender did the same. It seemed that they felt like they were such good friends that they always had to act like the other. That was part of the reason why Hermione never bothered to become very good friends with either of them. They weren't their own individuals yet, and nor were they confused like her, just insecure.

"Goodnight!" Hermione yelled, and ran up the stairs to her dormitory, a sweaty hand still clutching the letter from Malfoy tightly as if it were the answer to all her problems. Or perhaps...it was the reason for them.

**xxx**

Hermione woke up very late the next day. The only thing that caused her to get out of bed was the warm morning light beaming in through the eastern windows and on to her face. She showered, dressed, and put on casual clothes and headed down to the Great Hall, hoping for a calm, peaceful breakfast on a brisk Saturday morning.

The Dining Hall was nearly full, and students looked joyful as they sat chatting and gossiping about only God knew what. It was a sight that Hermione enjoyed, because you could be surrounded by people and at the same time, remain unnoticed. She stood on a small balcony one floor above, trying to scope out a few friends before she went down. Nearly every one of them was there, and she smiled. One person that she had looked for and not found, however, was Malfoy, which was weird—he was usually always up early.

As Hermione descended one of the blessedly un-changing staircases, the chatter of the Hall became louder and louder. No words were understandable, and it probably would have been impossible to tell what language they were speaking, had a stranger decided to enter. Crossing her arms over her chest to block an imaginary draft, she walked over towards the farther end of the Gryffindor table and moved to sit by Lavender. She had felt that it would've been uncomfortable sitting with Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Casey for obvious reasons.

"Hello Lavender, do you mind if I—" Hermione stopped mid-way through her sentence, confused. The volume of the chatter had instantly diminished, leaving an isolated and eerie silence around her, making her face grow hot. Every student within five feet on either side of Hermione looked up and stared at her. Some were smiling, some stone-faced, some giggling, some scowling. She looked back at them. "What?" she asked, an odd sense of nervousness descending upon her. Eventually more and more students had begun to look up at her, poking at and whispering to their friends, gathering more and more onlookers. Even some of the Slytherins had looked up.

And then a few of the Gryffindors glanced at the Slytherin table, and she understood.

"Hermione, sit down!" Lavender whispered, tugging at her sleeve. But Hermione did not want to sit down anymore. She glanced at Lavender, who looked slightly frightened, and then at Parvati, who would not return her gaze. She shook her head.

"Which one of you told everyone?" Hermione demanded coldly, but neither girl answered her—they remained silent. "Which..._one_?" she insisted again, her voice not getting louder but more intense. They looked at each other.

Hermione was furious to the point where her hands and knees were shaking. Here she had finally decided to confide in Lavender, and now...everyone knew. Even if it had been Parvati that had spread the rumor—which it very well might have been—Lavender wouldn't have said so.

After a tense moment, she looked up and scanned the excited faces, either furious or amused with knowledge of her and Draco Malfoy—she couldn't tell. "It isn't true," she choked out to the crowd slowly, backing away.

A distant movement caught Hermione's attention out of the corner of her eye, and she saw that it was Malfoy, emerging from the Slytherin wing of the castle. _Please don't let him see me_, she thought as she watched him saunter over to his usual seat at the Slytherin house table. A few people turned to stare at him, but he caught on and looked up to meet her eyes. They fixed and neither of them blinked.

Shaking even harder from the hundreds of conflicting emotions welling inside her, Hermione tore out of the hall as fast as she could.

She ran and ran, unable to believe the nerve of her friends. It was vile how everything had become deadly silent and everybody had stared at her, wide-eyed, as if her life was just some sort of show that everybody felt entitled to watch, free of cost.

_Where am I going_? She asked herself. She didn't know.

"_Granger_!" yelled a winded voice from some fifty feet behind her. It was Malfoy...he had followed her. Hermione stopped dead and turned around to stare him with a face contorted with surprise. He seemed very angry. He began to speak..."What the—"

"You, _IDIOT_!" Hermione shouted, remembering, and pointing a finger at him and letting the tears finally fall. "You STUPID, FOUL, VILE, DESPICABLE...THIS IS _ALL YOU R FAULT_!" she ranted, voice choking on every other word. She had forgotten about the immediate causes for the spread of the new rumor, but focused more on the underlying causes...the things that made the rumor...true, in a sense. As she spoke, she had walked towards him, so that now they were only an arms length apart.

Malfoy stared at her for a few seconds before demanding, "What have _I _done?!"

"You...you..._did you see_?"

"YES! I bloody well _have _seen, but why is this _my_ fault?"

"Because you—" Hermione stopped mid sentence because Malfoy had wiped one of her tears away with his hand, and this startled her. "Oh, don't be stupid," she said.

"You can't go around raging at me for being an idiot if you won't even tell me what I've done!" He seemed to not have noticed that he'd touched her face, as if had been absentminded.

"I can't tell you, okay?" she shouted, suddenly becoming violently aware of the way their voices echoed against the walls and amplified tenfold.

"Why not!?" Malfoy asked lividly, throwing one of his hands into the air.

"BECAUSE!" Hermione cried. "Just...forget it, alright?"

Draco had reached his arms out and put them on her waist, sending sparks down her legs and up her spine. He tried to catch her eyes but she would not look up at him. "They don't know what they're talking about," he said firmly. What, was he trying to take advantage of her in her state? What did he think he was doing? Hermione was not thinking rationally.

"They don't," repeated Hermione. "They don't know anything. There's nothing going on between us!" She laughed a high pitched nervous laugh, and grabbed his wrists, aggressively throwing them away from her. "I mean, you _hate_ me, a mudblood...and I ... I can't stand you...we would _never_...ugh" she trailed off, and another tear slid down her cheek. She still couldn't look at him. "It's...not your fault, I—"

It was so _embarrassing_. Hermione could tell that she was acting like some silly little teenage drama queen instead of the smart and level-headed person she had always prided herself on being. There was absolutely no point in anything that she had just said. It was just that the idea of the Hogwarts population believing that she had hooked up with Malfoy had completely thrown her off her rocker, and there were thousands of ways that she could have reacted. In this instance, she seemed to be trying to combine them all into one.

There was silence, and there Hermione stood, immobile, while Malfoy looked at her. _Why aren't I doing anything?_ Hermione wondered. Just as the silence began to become so unbearable, she spoke the first thing that came to her mind.

"That was stupid."

"I tried not to acknowledge that."

The corners of her lips began to curl into a smile, and she laughed at herself for a moment. "You're such a mystery, Malfoy," she said. It was definitely true. "So," she said, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet.

"Do you know who spread that?"

"I think I have an idea," said Hermione. "In fact...I think I have two ideas."

Malfoy's eyebrows lowered in confusion. He looked about to say something when Hermione grabbed his arm and began to drag him down the corridor. "Come on," she said. "We're going to fix this."

Malfoy followed Hermione as she walked in a quick and determined stride to an unknown destination, and he tried not to look conspicuous. He never bothered to ask her what was going on, and Hermione understood why. He trusted her. They ended up in front of the same storage room on the third floor that they had used before to help each other with homework.

"Damn, it's locked," she said under her breath after trying a few un-locking spells on the door. "How'd you get in before?"

"Oh," Malfoy said, smiling to himself. "Hang on." He fished around in his backpack for a second before pulling out a tiny copper key. He tapped his wand to the key and muttered something very quietly, causing the key to glow a faint warm golden color before he slipped it into a hole that Hermione had not noticed before. "Nicked it from Filch's office," he said, and pocketed the key. The door opened easily. "What do you want in here?"

"I'll tell you in a second," said Hermione. "Let's just get in first." She and Malfoy walked inside and dropped their things on the floor, and then searched for suitable places to sit.

"Okay?" Malfoy said, indicating that he wanted an explanation.

"We are going to stage a fight," Hermione said excitedly. "And _then_, nobody'll think there's anything going on between us."

**xxx**

**A/N**: I'm really going out on a limb here, I guess...not sending this to a beta. There are probably a million errors in it, and if you see one, please don't hesitate to tell me. Thanks for reviewing!


	9. The Plan

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter, nor any related thematic elements by JK Rowling.

**I'll Never Tell**

Malfoy could not stop laughing long enough for Hermione to finish talking.

"What's so funny?" she demanded. "It's a good idea! It's worked _loads_ of times in books I've read."

"That…is the…_stupidest_…thing…I've…ever…"

"It's NOT!"

"No…seriously, that's…wow, how'd you ever come up with…?" Malfoy was clutching a hand to his chest.

"Shut up!" Hermione defended. "Do you have any other ideas? I mean…what, do you want to just sit around and let people think that…that…no, I think that this is a very good idea." She resumed her superior stature and put her hands on her hips.

"It's not a big deal!" Malfoy said. "Can't you just _tell_ people that they're all being stupid? Really, if people are thick enough to not believe somebody like Hermione Granger then there's something wrong with them."

"Did you see anybody listen to Harry last year? Once the _Daily Prophet_ started saying all that rubbish about him nobody even gave him the time of day! He had to do _something_ about it, not just sit around and beg people to stop reading the paper!"

"What the hell are you talking—"

"The POINT," Hermione interrupted, "is that in this school, you have to take action."

"Now normally, I would be impressed," Malfoy said coolly. "But…no. _Stage a fight_? That has got to be more embarrassing than any rumor. Malfoys do NOT stage fights. Our wit comes _naturally_, we can't _plan_ our genius, it's not the way we—"

"Malfoy!" Hermione yelled.

"I'm not going to write it."

"I wasn't going to ask you to."

"But you'll make me lose. Malfoys do not _lose_, either. Ever."

Hermione was getting exceptionally fed up. "Cut it out! I'm serious. For once, step off your high horse and help me out, here!"

The blonde eyebrows on Malfoy's forehead flew up and disappeared behind the fringe of equally blonde hair that had fallen out over his face. "You are scary, sometimes," he said. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

"Er…_no_," said Hermione quickly. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason… No reason at all."

Malfoy restrained himself from sarcasm as long as he possibly could while Hermione began to plot their fight. This allotted to a grand total of five minutes. "Oh, yes," he said. "And we _advertise_ our fight, put up big great sparkling posters in the Great Hall—'Spectacularly Handsome Slytherin versus Girl Who Hates Really Really Hates Him,' It'll knock their socks off, and we can…no, that might hurt…"

Hermione picked up one of her books and whacked him over the head with it. "Shut up!" she yelled.

"I'm injured…" Draco said. "No, really, this has got to be this most ridiculous idea you've ever had."

"At times," Hermione said determinedly, "it's good to try things differently."

"Not this!" whined Draco.

"YES, this! This will work! You just wait, I'll finish plotting it all out and I'll owl it to you. We'll have time to go over it tomorrow in our planning session. Thursday, remember?"

Draco nodded resolutely. "You're barmy, Granger. See you tomorrow."

"You'd _better_ see me tomorrow," she said. "I'll leave first." Picking up her bag, she silently slipped out the door.

* * *

The next morning, Draco was sitting at the Slytherin table with Crabbe and Goyle when a tiny box fell out of the air and on his head. "Ouch," he said. "What the hell…?"

He grabbed the box off the floor where it had fallen, and noticed the letter attached to it. "You've got to be kidding me," he said to himself. He glanced up at the Gryffindor table and saw Hermione, who was sitting next to Neville Longbottom and reading the _Daily Prophet_.

"What's that?" Goyle asked stupidly.

"Dynamite," said Draco sarcastically. "I'm going to blow up the school."

Both Crabbe and Goyle tensed up immediately and Draco could've sworn they inched away from him on the bench. He rolled his eyes and opened the letter.

_Draco,_ it read. _Please read through this and tell me what you think later. No…actually, don't tell me what you think, just read through it and suck it up. It will work._

Draco scanned the letter, which consisted of various lines and commands. He was disgusted. "She made me lose!" he said indignantly. "She can't make me _lose_!"

"Are you gonna need help?" grunted Goyle.

"Need help? With _what_?" Draco demanded.

"With the," he pointed to the box, "you know," he lowered his voice, "dynamite."

"No, actually," Draco said. "Save yourself, go drown in the lake first."

Draco stood up from the table, suddenly not hungry from the foreboding idea of humiliation weighing heavily on his mind. Hermione noticed this from above her paper, and frowned. She followed him with her eyes as he left the Great Hall, and got up soon afterward to proceed to her classes for the day.

It was a very dull and boring morning, followed by a rigorous afternoon in which she was assigned positively sickening amounts of homework. Hermione rushed to the library as soon as her classes were over to get a head start on her essay for Advanced Potions, and she didn't even notice when Draco had come in and slipped into a chair opposite her.

"Do you ever take a break?" he asked, announcing his presence.

"Oh, hi," she answered, not answering his question. "You read my letter, right?"

"I wish that I hadn't."

"Don't be silly."

"Oh, right, because we all know that _I'm_ the one here who's being silly. How could I have forgotten…?"

Rather than retorting, Hermione chose to end the argument by laughing, which always seemed to do him in. But not this time.

"You made me lose," Draco continued.

"I know that," said Hermione calmly.

"Perhaps you didn't hear me correctly the first time I said it. Malfoys do not lose."

"And when has that ever been true? I don't think I've seen you win a fight with Harry _once_!"

"Granger did I ask you to contradict me?" Malfoy asked very quickly, ending the conversation immediately, because Hermione shook her head no, pursing her lips disapprovingly and looking back down at her work.

"We need to work quickly," she said.

* * *

**A/N**: Sorry for the long wait and the short-ness of this chapter. I've been pretty busy lately, and plotbunnies have been attacking. But anyway, be sure to review on your way out! Thanks


End file.
